


Inculcation

by benrumo



Series: Inquisitor Cesare Lavellan Desperately Tries Not to Ruin Everything [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Age Difference, Dubious Ethics, Implied Ephebophilia, Late Teens Dorian, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not Underage, Rough Sex, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3416192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benrumo/pseuds/benrumo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Relenus, the man from Dorian's past with "skin like fine whiskey," was more than just a passing fling. He was a teacher in the Minrathos Circle, one who taught Dorian more than advanced magiphysics. But Relenus is perhaps not the man a very young Dorian thought him to be.</p><p>(Works in series are not sequential, just same universe.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inculcation

**Author's Note:**

> This is not meant to be a particularly healthy relationship. Stemmed from the musing that if Tevinter had no laws regarding statutory rape, what kind man does that allow Relenus to be? But, if you mind the tags, Dorian isn't actually underage in this. To connect with my other fics in this universe, Dorian's in his final year of his Circle training, making him 19. Relenus and his friends are still major assholes and the entire premise of this fic is "uncomfortable Tevinter cultural differences."

“So, Relenus, I notice you have your eyes on the Pavus boy,” Aetius comments one evening over a stack of junior level examinations.

“Indeed. I’ve been rather impressed with his performance in theoretical magiphysics. He has a grasp of the unseen that is rare in a person so young,” Relenus says with a soft smile. “I’m trying to groom him for Octavia’s upper-division courses, but you know her reputation. The students still believe that story about the girl who melted into a puddle of water.”

Aetius laughs, “Maker, I can’t even remember who started that one any longer. Wasn’t it some lass in your form?”

“No, that one’s been around longer than I have. We started the one about the boils that spewed out flies when they burst.”

“Ugh, of course. Leave it to your form to come up with something that disgusting. I still haven’t forgotten that prank you pulled with the leaches, you know.”

“You say that as if I was personally involved.”

“Guilty until proven innocent, that’s my motto,” Aetius huffs. “But that Pavus boy, you’re impressed by him as well? He’s been preforming excellently in my class. Here, look at this essay on the effect of the atmospheric conditions and environment on the formation of the elements of magic.”

Aetius passes a series of pages over to Relenus. A brief glance tells him that, like all of Dorian’s work, it’s excellent.

“I was thinking of pushing him towards an apprenticeship here in the Circle, but I wondered if it would suit him. He doesn’t have the patience for teaching now, but what boy his age does?” Aetius muses. “But you’ve always had a better feel for these things that I have, Relenus. What kind of future do you imagine for the boy?”

Dorian Pavus is extraordinary, in every respect. His intelligence is only matched by his dedicated thirst for knowledge. It’s invigorating, being around someone who has that fresh perspective on the world. It’s one of the greatest joys of being a teacher, the way it drives him to try and keep up, to not become complacent with the way things are.

Dorian, he knows, will never be a teacher.

“He is the eldest son of a Magister, Aetius.”

“You’re right. I’m fooling myself as usual. I’m just so weary of being saddled with all the leftovers when it comes time to scout apprentices. The Circle should be a proud institution, not one filled with a bunch of…”

He sighs, calming himself.

“I’m wasting my words, I know.”

“You’d do better looking elsewhere. Dorian has a talent for learning, but it’s one that will never be satisfied inside these halls,” Relenus says kindly. “Believe me when I say that his success in your class is not a sign of a particular talent for your area of studies. His grades are excellent across the board.”

“Not in my class,” Basil interrupts.

“Yes, but that’s only because he doesn’t like you,” Relenus scoffs, instinctively coming to Dorian’s defense.

“Is that what he says?” Basil says, leaning forward with an interest that makes Relenus regret his thoughtless action. “And you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

Aetius looks between the two of them with some confusion until he finally lights upon an answer.

“Oh, is he one of your boys then, Relenus?”

“Yes,” Relenus admits. “The only one at the moment, thank you.”

“Figures you’d go straight for the stuck-up Altus,” Basil snorts. “Typical.”

That’s hardly the reason he pursued Dorian. Hardly the only reason, at least. But no matter how he engages Basil that argument is doomed only to end in a loss for him.

“Don’t be crass, Basil,” Aetius says on his behalf.

“I’m not being crass. I’m recognizing a bloody pattern when I see one.”

“I apologize for having a discerning taste. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of your book and simply throw myself upon those desperate for a passing grade,” Relenus says, unable to keep himself from the small jab. He can’t help but wonder if Basil’s interest in the topic at hand stems from finding Dorian a harder mark than his usual fair of failures.

“You’d be better off if you did. Have you had a look at these fledglings we’ve got this year? Not a drop of good blood among them, excusing Danerius’ girl. Now there’s a stuck-up Altus if I ever saw one,” Basil complains. “That pretty boy of yours has what, half a year left before he makes Enchanter? It’s going to be a long, dry season for you after he’s gone, that I can promise you.”

“Come now, it’s not all that bad. There’s Niverius’ boy. He’s showing some promise in the field of summoning,” Aetius corrects him.

“Dorian will be a tough act to follow regardless of the quality of our yearlings, I think,” Relenus says with mellowing pride. “I can’t remember the last time I saw someone with so much potential.”

Basil laughs, “You say that about every boy who catches your cock’s interest. He’s no more special than any of the others.”

“You look at his essay then,” Relenus shoves the exam towards Basil. “I promise you that it’s just you he refuses to work for. He says your class bores him.”

Basil looks at the essay for approximately three seconds before shoving it back at Relenus.

“Bah! What am I supposed to judge from this, that he can string pretty words along? Already knew that. Little cunt’s got a proper mouth on him, that’s obvious enough.”

“It’s good,” Aetius tells him, taking his examination back. “Very good. It’s the kind of work I’d expect from a man five, maybe ten years his senior. He’s not just parroting back at me, he’s engaging creatively with his subject. He has his own ideas, his own observations, and he’s not afraid to explore them.”

“And regardless of how he performs in your class, you know he has talent.”

“Oh, he’s got more than enough of that. It’s discipline he’s lacking. My class isn’t about talent, it’s about form. It’s not supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be bloody hard work,” Basil says, pointing a meaty finger at the both of them as if to drive his point home. “I know exactly why that little shit’s going to fail my class, and it’s because he’s got absolutely no respect. He’d rather be _pretty_ than demonstrate proper fucking technique. He’s a show-off, and it’s a waste of his energy and mine.”

“And if his prospects lay in combat, we’d have something of a problem on our hands,” Relenus says. “But we all know the boy’s never going to step on a battlefield a day in his life. His mind was made for academia.”

“His body too,” Aetius chuckles. “Could you imagine a scar on that face? Maker, no. That boy will never see combat.”

“Too right,” Basil says, his earlier vigor rushing out with a coarse laugh. “Can’t even remember the last time an Altus took the field. Don’t know why I let myself get so worked up over him.”

“Because it’s your job,” Relenus reminds him kindly. “It’s all of our jobs, when you get right down to it. They send us raw iron and we forge weapons and shields for the future of the Imperium. It speaks well of you to care, even if you know your lessons will be wasted.”

“Now you’re just trying to butter me up. What, you want me to go easier on the brat?”

“Maker forbid. It will do Dorian good to fail at least once in his academic career,” Relenus says, not that he imagines failing a physical education class will prove much a slight on the boy’s considerable ego.

“Good to see he hasn’t gotten a hold of your mind as well as your cock.”

“Dorian may be extraordinary, but I’m still his teacher. My first concern will always be the development of my students,” he says a touch defensively. He’s been accused more than once of getting too attached to his star pupils. It’s a tiresome accusation, particularly given the absolute lack of evidence in its support.

“Oh, aye, you’re just out to make sure he gets a very well-rounded education. You bring him in for all those extra lessons just to drive the _point_ home,” Basil cackles. “God, I love watching you go at it, sometimes. Those poor boys never know what’s hit them until you’ve got them with their bare ass in the air.”

“You make it sound as if they weren’t all desperate for it long before I ever laid a hand on them,” Relenus scoffs dully over the rim of his coffee. “Dorian was already engaged in _independent study_. All I did was step in and provide proper mentorship.”

“Joyous. So another sodomite joins the Magisterium,” Aetius complains. “Just what the Imperium needs.”

“High talk from a man who was just lamenting his loss from our own ranks,” Relenus points out, though he admittedly shares his own worries about Dorian’s hedonistic inability to resist temptation.

“It’s a surprise that lot gets anything done with how many of them we’ve got up there now. I wouldn’t be surprised if they spent every bloody caucus polishing each other’s knobs,” Basil says. “You know they pushed back the legislation on the expansion of the military budget again this past week?”

“It’s not the military budget you should be in arms about, it’s the property acts. They’re still considering expanding slave rights when it’s not slave rights we need half so much as a system of tax to keep good Tevinter businessmen out of slavery in the first place. My favorite tailor was recently bought up by some Altus or the other. It’s a poor economic dealing when a man has to buy a blighted tailor just to keep his robes in shape.”

“If you’re going to start talking politics, I believe I’ll excuse myself for the evening,” Relenus says.

“Typical Relenus, keeping to the middle ground,” Basil scoffs. “Admit it, the only reason you keep your nose out of it is because you can’t risk those grown up boys of you catching wind of your liberal leanings and casting you back out into the cold with the rest of us.”

“The wisest men know that there is wisdom in silence. I only aspire to be more like the Maker in that I hope my actions speak where my words do not.”

Relenus excuses himself for a final time and leaves the two of them to discuss subjects he finds too coarse for polite company. His stomach is strong. It has to be, or he would have died years ago from all the bitter words he’d swallowed. But there’s some shit in the world that even he can’t dine on with a smile.

Besides, there’s always more pleasurable company he could be seeking. For now, at least. Relenus feels Dorian rapidly outpacing him, but there’s one last lesson he has to teach.

Dorian kisses him the moment the door is closed, eager as he always is. It’s one of the many benefits of youth. Relenus pulls Dorian close by his hips and takes command of the pace, forcing Dorian to restrain himself and follow instead of lead. Dorian knows what’s expected of him, but he has no talent for self-control. He’s true to his blood in that respect, though not perhaps his father’s.

“Let me,” Dorian demands more than asks, his fingers already pulling the tie holding Relenus’ hair loose.

This Relenus never begrudges Dorian. While the boys he takes to bed often appreciate his body, it’s more for what he can do to them than any physical quality in his possession. It’s rare to find one who compliments his face or his hair. Dorian in contrast to his predecessors always takes a great interest in Relenus’ long hair, whether it’s contextually pleasurable or simply playfully affectionate. Relenus can’t say he minds, though it is unusual.

Dorian has proven particularly unusual on the subject of preference more than once. Relenus worries sometimes about where the boy’s peculiar tastes will lead him. These days he often finds himself recalling the boy he coaxed Dorian away from, a mousey little thing of intelligence but no breeding. He’d caught them more than once speaking in affectionate, hushed tones about serialized fiction magazines secreted in through the students’ little smuggling ring. They sat too close, were too intimate with one another. Relenus knew love when he saw it, or he knew its boyish counterpart. It had been an act of charity, stealing Dorian away before things became messy. But for all he had taught Dorian, he hadn’t yet managed to instill a sense of sexual decorum in him. He worries sometimes that it’s a lesson he’ll never be able to teach. Some students, he has learned over his years in the Circle, are simply incapable of absorbing certain lessons. It’s as if there is some instinctive fault that occurs regardless of intelligence or quality of breeding.

“I’m not stealing you away from your studies, am I? I know that examinations are looming close.”

“Hardly. Your class is the only one that provides any real challenge for me, and I think you’ll find I’m quite prepared for that one,” the boy says, his fingers working on the belt holding Relenus’ robes together.

Relenus takes Dorian’s hands off his belt and pins them roughly to the wall on either side of the boy’s head.

“What have I told you about getting greedy, boy?” he warns, voice low. For all that he loves the eagerness of youth, embodied perfectly in this impatient and demanding boy, he’s forced by the nature of his own waning youth to demand Dorian take a slower pace. “Perhaps you need another _lesson_.”

Dorian groans and instinctively tries to lunge towards him, but Relenus’ hands hold him neatly in place. Nearly every one of his boys found pleasure in the occasional punishment meted out in the bedroom, but Dorian took to them with exceptional zeal. Yet another quirk he feels inadequate to the task of breaking Dorian from. It’s too easy sometimes to tie the boy down to the bed, to gag him so he doesn’t have to restrain his moans, to work him open with his fingers by degrees until the boy is nearly mad with pleasure beneath him. It’s seductive in the extreme, but hardly fitting behavior for a Magister’s son.

But as Basil said, his time with the boy is growing short. Perhaps he should recognize a lost cause when he sees one, stop trying to be the teacher, and give in to self-indulgence. He takes the boy’s mouth with his own, giving in to the temptation to kiss him as hard and as deep as he wants. Where other boys might have withdrawn from such unbridled passion, Dorian takes it all and demands more.

“If you can’t restrain yourself, I’ll have to restrain you,” he threatens, and Dorian’s eyes go wide on the spot. It makes Relenus wonder just how far he could push. Perhaps he’s been taking the wrong tack with the boy’s training.

He releases Dorian’s hands to take him by the jaw. He tilts his head gently up and kisses him again with the patient care and control he uses with all his boys. Instead of reassuring Dorian or reestablishing some sense of the familiar, all this seems to do is make him even more impatient. His hands flirt awkwardly along Relenus’ arms and shoulders. Forbidden from their true goal, Dorian seems at a complete and frustrated loss. Keep pushing like this, Relenus knew from experience, and that frustration would turn to outright anger. Too much denial left the boy petulant and childish. It was one of the few ways in which he was perfectly ordinary.

“Put your hands down at your sides,” he snaps on impulse, growing irritated.

Dorian immediately obeys.

He traces Dorian’s wet bottom lip with his thumb, wondering what he should do. Dorian’s so close to graduation, so near adulthood. Relenus recalls the boy he first kissed almost a year past. How young he had seemed then. Truly a boy, barely even able to grow a beard. He’d taught Dorian how to groom himself, steered him away from fanciful plans to grow a mustache of all things and had him grow a proper beard in keeping with modern fashion. Just a thin thing, following the line of his jaw with sharp, well-kept lines, his sideburns mirroring their angle. Not the proper full beard of an adult, but it’s aged him wonderfully regardless. He does look almost the man now. Perhaps it’s time to start treating him like one.

“Strip,” he orders, stepping back.

Dorian obeys. Once he’s bare, he looks up at Relenus, as if waiting for his next command.

“On the bed.”

Dorian obeys.

“On your hands and knees.”

Dorian obeys.

Relenus hesitates. He shouldn’t be encouraging this. There’s a temptation in him to roll the boy back over, to take him in his arms like the child he is and ask him if this is what he really wants. Who could want this kind of treatment? There’s a madness in this perversion that’s infecting them both. But no. He is the adult here. He won’t ask Dorian for reassurance. It is clear enough that this is what the boy wants.

He walks along the side of the bed, dragging his fingers up Dorian’s spine. Dorian arches into the touch like a cat.

“Relenus…” he breathes.

“I’m going to tie your wrists to the bed to keep your hands out of my way,” he tells Dorian, voice steady and sure though his certainty is little more than skin deep. “Then I’m going to gag you.”

When he takes the length of rope from his wardrobe, Dorian readily presents his wrist to be bound. Relenus doesn’t dare look him in the eye. The boy is shameless. For all that he has use for that shamelessness, it stands at opposition to everything he has ever worked for as a teacher.

He doesn’t warn Dorian when it comes time to slide the gag in place. He loops it around his head from behind and forces Dorian to adapt. Once the tie is secure, he pulls the boy’s head up suddenly by his hair. The face that greets him is centered with sharp eyes, grunting and wincing at the harsh treatment.

“Better,” he says. At least the boy will not take all abuse without protest.

He oils his hands while listening to Dorian breathe. Dorian tests the bonds on his wrists as if he’s forgotten that his every action is being watched. No, as if he doesn’t care. He twists his wrists, getting a feel for the small bit of flexibility left in the knots. His fingers flex and contract. He makes a noise and, as if satisfied with what he’s observed, relaxes. Shameless.

Relenus drives two fingers in him without warning. Dorian grunts in surprise, but it’s hardly a protest. His ass twitches around Relenus’ fingers but relaxes soon enough. Relenus works him open at an unprecedented pace, ignoring for once the boy’s cock. The others would have needed that reassurance, that pleasure to counterpoint the pain. Not Dorian. He wonders how long the boy has been waiting for him to take off the kid gloves.

“I’m going to fuck you tonight, Dorian,” he says, working his fingers at an angle that leaves Dorian writhing and thrusting back against him. “You like the sound of that, don’t you?”

Dorian merely grunts in response. Relenus isn’t sure if it’s a reaction to his words or the fingers inside him. Either way, his own cock is hard and growing weary of being ignored. This game of theirs has gone on for far too long, he realizes. He could have likely taken the boy the first time he kissed him. Perhaps he has only been fooling himself this whole time, thinking of Dorian as inexperienced. Perhaps that mousey boy wasn’t even the first.

Relenus undresses and climbs up on the bed behind Dorian. He spreads the boy’s ass apart, observing the loose, wet hole.

“Maker, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone half so eager for cock as you are.”

Dorian jerks in his bonds so hard it rocks the entire bed. His breath hisses through his gag. Relenus isn’t sure whether to interpret that as protest or yet another demonstration of eagerness. He refuses to indulge the temptation to stop and find out.

“Enough of that!” he says, spanking Dorian one good time. “If you damage either the bed or that wall, there will be a much more severe punishment in store for you when we’re done. One hundred lines with your weaker hand on the destruction of a teacher’s property.”

Dorian whines, but goes otherwise docile. Relenus knows that there is no more room for hesitation. The boy clearly wants it, has probably wanted it for a long time. It’s time to give in, for both of their sakes.

Dorian’s entire body goes stiff at the first press of Relenus’ cock. There’s resistance still, despite how well he’s prepared the boy. There always is, the first time. They’re always too excited, always a little bit scared. It’s reassuring, to think perhaps that Dorian isn’t quite as experienced as he earlier imagined.

“Breathe,” he reminds Dorian as he slides fully in.

Dorian pants through the gag, pulling in desperate breaths as his body fights instinctively against the cock inside him and his mind fights back.

“How is it, Dorian?” Relenus asks, breath ghosting across Dorian’s spine.

Dorian shakes beneath him. Arms still thin with the awkward proportions of boyhood struggle to hold up his heaving frame. He’s yet to figure out how to relax around the cock inside him. Relenus relishes that inexperience. He strokes Dorian’s hips as he fights the instinct to clench and push. He could nearly come from this alone, this wonderful, struggling, vivacious tightness.

“Speak. Tell me how it feels,” he says, pulling off the gag.

“Excellent. It feels excellent.”

“Do you want to proceed?”

“Maker, yes! Please!” the boy begs, and Relenus gives him what he wants.

Dorian comes screaming without having ever been touched. It’s the most beautiful thing that Relenus has ever seen, but that’s only if he’s looking with the eyes of a man. The sight he has through his eyes as a teacher is a much more concerning one, and that image is the one that lasts as the night wears on and Relenus retires in bed alone.

 _Another sodomite joins the Magisterium,_ Aetius had said. A jest to him, but a disturbing truth from Relenus’ perspective. Basil may operate on a principle of pure self-interest when it came to those he took to his bed, but Relenus had meant it when he’d said that he was always a teacher first. Education had to extend beyond the classroom, he knew, if those boys were to make proper husbands and fathers. They needed to know how to sate their body’s own capacity for pleasure. His father had grown up in the era where men and women were expected to restrain themselves in the name of chivalric honor. He knew well where that path lead a man. No, he would not see that tradition pass on. But Relenus was no hedonist. He supported a healthy management of the body’s natural needs, not this gluttony Dorian had coaxed him into.

Perhaps it was time for him to retire from this game. Perhaps Dorian should be his last. If he couldn’t keep up with the raging desire of youth, he was not fit to be its teacher. Perhaps he should even stop now, rather than allow himself to be complicit in Dorian’s further ruin. Not that he doubted for an instant that Dorian would just find another man to tempt if he stepped out of the picture. It was the principle of it all. He felt almost dirty, tainted by Dorian’s insatiable lust.

He was equaled by Dorian. It was that simple. No, perhaps he had been bested. Bested by a boy. He would put an end to it. He truly meant to put an end to it.

But then Dorian came back the next night.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about what you did to me,” he said. Neither could Relenus. Dorian was no victim of temptation. This lust was not his weakness, it was his essence. Relenus was the one destroyed by it, made worse for every time he gave in.

Graduation sent Dorian willingly off into the arms of another teacher and Relenus retired from his extracurricular advisory. Sometimes the hardest lesson to learn was when to quit.


End file.
